Emails-to-the-Editor

Hoax. Fraud. Inadequate.

2012-02-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

Editor,

JFK said we were going to the moon. He didn't know how we were going to get there, and he didn't have an answer to every objection raised by every nattering nabob of negativity.

But that was another USA --- a USA with a can-do attitude, a USA inspired with a vision of doing something great, something no one could ever dream of doing alone.

Now climate change is a "hoax." Renewable energy is "inadequate." Green technology is "a fraud."

You know who are a hoax, inadequate and a fraud? Those sanctimonious, smug, chicken-hearted Republicans --- ready to install a Big Brother government-issue spy-cam in your bedroom, palms up begging for grease from big-money criminals in $1,000 suits, and so small-minded and backward they can't dream of anything bigger than letting the oceans and the sky be trashed with oil so they can see a couple more zeroes on the bottom lines in their own portfolios.

Anyone who votes for any Republican for any office anywhere in this country needs to have their head examined.

Re: "Shell Clears Major Hurdle in Its Bid for New Arctic Drilling" (2/18/2012)

Scrutinize first, then implement.

2012-02-16T12:29:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Here is a proposal that will make "free-market" enthusiasts howl:

Instead of waiting for financial industry "innovations" to wreak havoc with our economy and ruin individual citizens' lives, why not institute a rule that proposed "innovations" be evaluated by government, including full vetting by the public, before being allowed to be implemented?

After all, oversight like that proposed in this article is required to be exhaustively vetted before being implemented. So why are abominations like payday lenders allowed to spring up and only after they have wrung enormous profits at exorbitant interest rates from people who can least afford to pay them are they scrutinized and regulated?

Allowing the most damage to be done to the most vulnerable by the most powerful before bringing "innovations" under control seems to me to be the exact opposite of how our self-governing nation should go about managing its finances.

Re: "Collection and Credit Firms Facing Broad New Oversight" (2/16/2012)

Republican Class War.

2012-02-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Instead of taxing millionaires and billionaires, who have the money and are not paying their fair share, Republicans are increasing taxes, in the form of higher pension contributions, on federal workers -- middle-class workers who have done nothing to deserve being penalized in this manner.

Make middle-class workers pay more so that millionaires and billionaires continue to pay less. This is the Republicans' class war battle cry.

And to those who say that increasing pension contributions is not increasing taxes on federal workers, think abstractly. The operative word is "more." Federal workers will pay more so that millionaires and billionaires can continue to pay less. Whether it is a tax or a pension payment, this unprovoked Republican attack on federal workers reduces the money in their pockets.

Re: "A Rare Deal" (2/16/2012)

Grow the GDP.

2012-02-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

Editor,

After WWII the American national debt was 122% of GDP.
In 1970 it was 28%.

The total national debt in 1946 was $270.1 billion.
It increased fairly consistently to $380 billion in 1970.

The debt was 50% bigger in 1970 than in 1946, but its percentage of GDP was 80% less.

Why? Because GDP increased prodigiously.

If you are worried about debt as a percentage of GDP, grow the GDP.

How? Tax the people and the corporations who are hoarding capital, and invest it in infrastructure, research, education, renewable energy, and green technology.

Tax cuts for the rich, tax loopholes for the rich and corporations, and subsidies for profitable corporations like oil and agribusiness drain capital into hands that do not stimulate GDP.

Capital creates wealth when it is invested in productive enterprises. Capital hoarded and/or used to speculate doesn't create anything. It doesn't create wealth, and it doesn't stimulate GDP.

Re: "Portugal’s Debt Efforts May Be Warning for Greece" (2/15/2012)

Against the Republican party.

2012-02-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

Editor,

This election is about coattails.

President Obama should run vigorously against the Republicans in Congress, energizing Democratic and Independent voters despite Republican efforts nationwide to suppress poor, minority, and elderly voters' access to the polls.

Romney's line that the president has "failed" presents a perfect opportunity for Mr. Obama to: a) make Romney irrelevant in the general election by relentlessly reframing Romney's specious claim that the president has failed as failure of the Republicans in Congress, and b) run not against Romney but the Republican party.

Re: "Romney Scores Nevada Victory With Broad G.O.P. Support" (2/5/2012)

No Business.

2012-01-31T14:19:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Republicans like Mitt Romney harp and harp on their coordinated lie that President Obama has "failed."

The truth is that Republican idiots in the House and the Senate have failed this president and failed the American people by having thwarted every constructive move he has tried to make to repair the disasters the Bush administration left in its wake.

It is true that progressives are disappointed that Obama surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders and seems not to have learned that "bipartisanship" is impossible with rabid ideologues.

Be all that as it may, Mitt Romney basing his campaign on the lie that President Obama has "failed" demonstrates just how manipulative of a phony this man is.

Similarly his prattling about corporations being people. A corporation is an abstraction, Mitt. It is a legal construct. Like a prison. Is a prison a person, Mitt, because it is people that are brutalized behind its walls by thugs hired by capitalists like you?

Barack Obama talks a good game and executes terribly. But he believes his empty platitudes like "now is the time" and "no red states and no blue states."

Mitt Romney doesn't believe the president has "failed," and he doesn't believe that corporations are people. He thinks he can manipulate the public with misrepresentations like these and is therefore precisely the kind of person who has no business going anywhere near the White House.

Re: "Romney’s Fight to Win Comes at a Cost, Polls Show" ()

Never afford alone.

2012-01-18T20:54:00.000-08:00

Editor,

A working stiff who makes $1,500 in his IRA in a good year should not have that profit taxed away, and in fact a lower tax rate on capital gains in her or his case does incentivize investment.

But a Wall Street sharpie who makes $1.5 billion gambling in the derivatives markets is gaming the system when he pays only 15% on his winnings.

Obviously, capital gains below a certain amount, say $15,000 a year, should be taxed at 15% or something comparable to encourage average people to save and also to help us keep most of the profits our small investments yield.

It's the same story with taxes in general.

One-percenters and their mendacious politician friends wield the specter of "your" taxes going up when sensible policy is to keep taxes on modest incomes low to encourage saving and spending on goods and services but tax large incomes liberally to fund the myriad services that only a government can provide and individual people, even rich people, could never afford alone.

Re: "The 1% and That 15%" (1/19/2012)

Romney.

2012-01-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Gingrich thinks that by outing Romney as a private equity raider who liquidates companies to line his own pockets he can deflect onto Romney all of the anger that working people feel about:

** Corporations that do manufacture products having closed thousands of US factories and off-shored millions of jobs in the last 30 years to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor;

** Corporations eliminating pensions, foisting an ever-increasing share of health care costs onto workers, cutting benefits, flat-lining wages, demanding longer hours, short-staffing operations from hospitals to software development shops;

** Bush tax cuts for the richest 1% being the number one cause, after his wars and the Wall Street bailout, of the enormous budget deficit Republicans rail against;

** Deregulation of Wall Street having led to the housing bubble, the subprime mortgage disaster, the loss of trillions of dollars in equity by American homeowners (if not their homes), and Washington's bailout of too-big banks instead of the 99%;

** Federal, state, and local cuts by Republican politicians to essential government services on the basis of screwy "free-market" nonsense rather than to tax the 1%;

etc.

Gingrich's play is gutsy, but it is doomed to fail because corporate capitalism and the Republican party are responsible for a million times more bad things than the bad things Romney is responsible for.

Re: "Romney Rivals Beat Obama to the Punch" (1/12/2012)

The Spectacle.

2012-01-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Mitt Romney's rivals for the Republican nomination probably don't actually believe it, but they are peddling the line that the private equity industry is the unethical bastard child of the otherwise triumphant and eminently just American version of capitalism championed by Republicans from Ronald Reagan on.

But talking up this foolishness will only raise more questions about the power big money has -- and uses with nary a thought of its destructive effects on working people in particular and the USA in general.

In some ways it was inevitable that the greed and callousness that lie at the heart of right-wing "thought" would finally impel Newt Gingrich to loose this genie from the Republicans' bottle of bile.

I must admit that for me it is gratifying to watch these money-grubbing power-hungry selfish twits go after one another in public. Maybe the spectacle will finally wake up all those brainwashed TV watchers who are manipulated year after year with race baiting, hippie bashing, gay bashing, and terrorism-inflating idiocy into voting for people who suck their blood while they are sleeping and laugh about it while thinking up the next whopper with which to bamboozle the uniformed.

Re: "The Republican Contest" (1/11/2012)

Oh, yes.

2012-01-09T14:14:00.000-08:00

Editor,

This Republican canard about being able to go to a "competitor" for a product or service that only a handful of corporations provide is laughable on its face.

There is no practical difference from a consumer's point of view between a market in which one company has monopoly power and one in which monopoly power is distributed among a few enormous, multi-billion-dollar companies.

The same is true for Republicans' argument that unions are unnecessary because individual workers can negotiate with their employers without collective bargaining.

Oh, yes. An hourly worker who makes $24,000 a year is on an equal footing with a CEO who makes $10 million -- assuming that worker can get anywhere within 100 yards of the boardroom door.

Re: "Romney Firing Remarks Draw Criticism From Huntsman" (1/9/2012)

Just plain stupid.

2012-01-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Republican economic philosophy since Ronald Reagan is: "It's every man for himself."

No regulations on corporations. Unrestrained predation by corporations of the environment and labor. No safety net for the young, the weak, the poor, the sick. No taxes on the rich. No money for public education, health care, libraries, parks. Legislative support for sleazy scams by financial industry sharpies.

So to hear Republicans blast Romney because he introduced into companies what Republicans call "efficiency" and "productivity" and "profitability" by gutting them, laying off workers, destroying local economies, and off-shoring jobs is beyond ironic.

Romney's critics are complaining because Bain didn't "make" anything, but if a company like GE, for example, which does "make" things employs exactly the capitalist techniques that Bain did, that makes destroying workers lives OK.

Republicans' analysis of Bain is beyond hypocritical. It is just plain stupid.

Re: "Romney Waves Away Opponents’ Intensifying Attacks" (1/10/2012)

Cooptation.

2012-01-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

Editor,

That this video was produced by REPUBLICANS (!) is nothing short of amazing. It could just as easily have been produced by OWS. But there is a catch.

This is the most egregious example of cooptation I have ever seen.

The idea is to pin all of the abuses of the 99% by corporate pirates on Mitt Romney. Purge ol' Mitt from the Republican presidential candidate roster, and the problem will disappear.

Unfortunately, there is a list as long as your arm of Republican politicians, from Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan, who stand precisely for what this video rails against and for a rogues' gallery of multinational corporations that do worse to the common man every hour than 100 Bain Capitals could do in hundred lifetimes.

Re: "PAC Ads to Attack Romney as Predatory Capitalist" (1/9/2012)

Our benevolent despot.

2011-12-31T18:48:00.000-08:00

Editor,

The president is reported to have said that he would “never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens” because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”

Does he not realize that once this abomination is law a successor of his can use the provision that "suspicion" of terrorism need not be proved to lock up their political enemies indefinitely without a trial? Like Occupy movement supporters, for example?

The presidency does not end with Mr. Obama, our apparently benevolent despot, but will continue -- worst case with a crazed Republican nincompoop armed now with the power to transform our country into a latter-day version of communist countries like the USSR.

Re: "After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill" (1/1/2012)

I am outraged.

2011-12-30T22:52:00.000-08:00

Editor,

I live in San Francisco, and I receive pleas from politicians in New York, Ohio, and other states for donations to Congressional campaigns in yet other states, like Kansas and Colorado.

I am outraged by the blatant undermining of our system of representative government that this represents.

The citizens of Kansas or Colorado or any other state are entitled and should be left alone to elect their own representatives without interference by out-of-state "donors" near and far.

This corruption of the American political process shows just how poisoned by money our elections and how unrepresentative our government have become.

Also, "democracy" doesn't mean you vote for representatives funded by deep-pocketed donors in distant locales once every 2 or 4 or 6 years. Democracy means you play a day-to-day role in the decision-making process in your government and at your workplace, both of which are obviously lacking in the United States today.

Occupy have it right. We can change this. All it takes is the will of ordinary people to do it.

Re: "Group’s Ads Rip at Gingrich as Romney Stands Clear" (12/31/2011)

"Double taxtion."

2011-12-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

Editor,

"Double taxation" is a bogus crock of sophistry.

If I pay taxes on my paycheck and use my net to pay you for washing my laundry, is it "double taxation" for you to pay taxes on the income my payment to you represents?

Of course not. So taxes on my income as a corporation that I pay you have nothing to do with the taxes you pay on your paycheck from me.

Re: "Tax Benefits From Options as Windfall for Businesses" (12/30/2011)

Energy wasted.

2011-12-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Intellectual energy wasted on professional sports by TV viewers and therefore not spent on studying history, economics, and politics is one reason our country is degenerating daily into a ship of fools being steered into oblivion by a gang of crooks.

Re: "For N.F.L., Concussion Suits May Be Test for Sport Itself" (12/30/2011)

Their mission.

2011-12-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

Editor,

According to this article ( "Italy Turns Its Focus to Stimulating Economy"): "Critics of the government’s economic program have complained that it is too tax-heavy and not incisive enough when it comes to cuts to public spending."

This is a rather biased view in my opinion and pushes the idea subtly that Keynesian economics is indeed dead, as does this paragraph:

"The growth package will include moves to further open up Italy’s closed professions and guilds, encourage competition and develop an outdated economic infrastructure, which many analysts say keep production costs high and uncompetitive in world markets."

Can anyone suggest a better source than the NYT business pages for a little color with respect to what vague terms like "develop an outdated economic infrastructure" mean?

Everyone knows that the global ruling class sees its opportunity right now to reduce Western workers to debt peonage and that a bone here and there for current beneficiaries of the remains of the welfare state will grease the wheels of full disempowerment of young workers coming up.

But there are alternatives, and these can only be understood and embraced by people who do not believe that their mission in life is to fulfill God's edict that they stuff as much of the fruit of other people's labor into their own pockets as they can.

Re: "Italy Turns Its Focus to Stimulating Economy" (12/30/2011)

Tax the rich.

2011-12-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Pawning social needs off onto "faith based" charities -- and its attendant endless flood of pleas for donations in every mailbox in America -- is the neoliberal solution to "promoting the general welfare" while the criminals who own the United States stuff more and more of the wealth of this nation into their own pockets.

It is inevitable that religious nonsense would rub up against this con game creating conflict and disunity.

Tax the rich, for God's sake. Get money out of politics, and spend taxpayer dollars on something other than war, bank bailouts, and subsidies for our corporate masters.

Re: "For Bishops, a Battle Over Whose Rights Prevail" (12/29/2011)

Crime.

2011-12-17T23:37:00.000-08:00

Editor,

I have a serious problem with calling starting a war on the basis of bald-faced lies a "mistake." I call it a crime. As I call outing Valerie Plame -- because her husband proved unequivocally that one of the lies upon which the war was based was a lie -- a crime. And I call torture a crime.

I also call this defense appropriations spending bill that the president is going to sign a crime. Everyone seems to think this law will be applied to actual "suspected terrorists," but don't you understand that since suspicions of a detainee's terrorism do not need to be proved, this law can be used to lock up political enemies of whoever occupies the White House?

Am I paranoid? No. I am afraid of the creeping authoritarianism in what used to be The United States of America and is now on the verge of descending into a monstrosity that would warm Joseph Stalin's heart.

Re: "The Pungent Aroma of Paranoia" (12/18/2011)

Planet Earth.

2011-12-17T23:36:00.001-08:00

Editor,

Does the author of this article live on the planet Earth?

The American Empire is enforcing its hegemony as we speak with the threat, if not the outright use, of the most powerful, expensive military machine the world has ever seen. Threats are made daily that the "military option" is "on the table." Drones wield thunderbolts from the skies, killing anyone the rulers of our nation care to.

I can empathize with the author's hope that no coalition of parties who today are under the iron thumb of the United States manage to reduce our nation to rubble as the Allies did to Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan. I like not having to worry about being bombed, strafed, or otherwise shot at. But the USA is an imperial power, and it rules as all imperial powers have ruled: with military might.

Re: "War Really Is Going Out of Style" (12/18/2011)

No room left.

2011-12-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Editor,

"Financial services" -- read rip-off artists and scammers -- are a poor foundation upon which to build an economy. Ask the USA.

Between so-called "defense" industries and Wall Street, there is almost no room left for alternative energy, universal health care, affordable housing, mass transportation, old-age pensions, public education, or any of the infrastructure that once-upon-a-time made the USA an outstanding country for an everyday citizen to live in: county, state, and national parks; public libraries; art, theater, music, dance; etc.

Re: "Cameron Addresses British Parliament Over Veto on Europe Treaty" (12/13/2011)

Now go back to sleep.

2011-11-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

Editor,

U.S. taxpayers bailing out Europe coincides with 1,000 LA police in riot gear shutting down the last Occupy encampment in the U.S. and the U.S. Senate passing a bill to employ the U.S. military anywhere in the world, including inside the USA, to detain indefinitely and torture anyone, including U.S. citizens, whom the president says is a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. Meanwhile, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was announced last week to be 389 ppm while everyone knows that 350 ppm is the point of no return for our planet. The 1% are flailing dinosaurs, violently flapping their tails, destroying all the furniture in the room trying to maintain dominance in a system that is literally dying. There's your news. Now go back to sleep.

Re: "Central Banks Take Joint Action to Ease Debt Crisis" (12/1/2011)

Prosecute Pike.

2011-11-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

Editor,

In addition to signing a petition to fire UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, I sent the following letter to Jeff W. Reisig, District Attorney of Yolo County, CA, where UCD is located:

I am writing with regard to the incident at UCD on 11/18/2011 in which Lt. John Pike of the UCD Campus Police discharged a pepper spray canister into the faces of a group of nonviolently protesting students sitting quietly on the ground.

(The video of the incident is here.)

According to California Penal Code Section 12403.7 (a) (8), use of tear gas or a tear gas weapon, EXCEPT in self-defense, can be a felony, the following being possible sanctions for misuse:

* Up to three years in state prison; or
* Up to one year in county jail; or
* Fine up to $1, 000; or
* Both fine and imprisonment.

I urge you to prosecute Lt. Pike for discharging a defensive weapon, egregiously, when neither he nor anyone else was threatened with bodily harm.

Thank you.

Re: "Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters" (11/20/2011)

Here we are.

2011-11-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

Editor,

With globalization, corporate bosses have seen the abject poverty that workers in developing economies endure, and they have seen that such thoroughly impoverished workers manage to make it through the night somehow and show up to work the next day.

"Why, then," the titans of industry asked themselves, "bother paying anything to support the health and welfare of American workers? They will work whether we do or don't, and it is more money for us if we don't."

So the word went out to their politicians, and here we are.

Re: "Deficit Panel Faces a Rift Over Who Ought to Pay" (11/20/2011)

Newt.

2011-11-19T14:34:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Tax the rich, Newt. Fund schools adequately so they do not "fail."

I love the rhetoric vilifying "unions." Of course corporations and right-wing governments whose constituency are the 1% want to destroy unions. Then individual workers would be left to "negotiate" singly and alone with their rich and therefore powerful bosses, which translates into: "Shut up. Do what you are told."

Yes, it's the Great Chain of Economic Being.

A handful of pashas at the top are entitled to all the wealth of the universe because they belong obviously to a superior race; and the slaves, serfs, indentured servants, peasants, children, minimum wage workers,and other inherently and therefore deservedly poor do the work for a pittance if anything at all.

Isn't it wonderful that Newt is one of the anointed? Don't you just love doing all you can to make him as rich as he possibly can be?

Re: "From Gingrich, an Unconventional View of Education" (11/19/2011)

Cowards.

2011-11-15T00:34:00.001-08:00

Editor,

San Francisco and Seattle have passed resolutions not to evict Occupy encampments and are negotiating with them about issues concerning site management and provision of city services, including police services if requested.

"Fire and health hazards" are a pretense used by cowardly city governments to try to crush a nascent movement that is going to rock this nation to its core.

Mounting attacks on encampments by heavily armed paramilitaries is only going to make the movement a more irresistible force. The 1% are going to lose. They are outnumbered 99 to 1, no matter how many police they hide behind.

Re: "Police Begin Clearing Zuccotti Park of Protesters" (11/16/2011)

Negotiate.

2011-11-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

Editor,

"[G]rowing concerns over health and public safety" are a pretext to crush a nascent movement and suppress organization by citizens outraged by the inordinate power of money in American politics and the vast disparity in wealth this corrupt state of affairs has caused.

Cities genuinely concerned with "health and public safety" could easily negotiate with Occupy encampments, as San Francisco is as a matter of policy enacted by the Board of Supervisors, with respect to issues such as: number and location of port-a-potties, who pays for them, cleaning schedule, who does the cleaning and how, and other issues with respect to provision of police and other services to ensure the health and safety of the occupiers.

The issues facing our nation are complex, as are potential solutions and the discussions that are needed to devise them. Occupations are vital to this public discussion and, given cooperation between the city, merchants, and other stake-holders in the public spaces being used for this purpose, reasonable processes can be worked out.

Re: "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses" (11/14/2011)

My face.

2011-11-13T19:41:00.000-08:00

Editor,

What part of inappropriate don't you understand?

People slaving away in cubicles do not have a choice about being there. Oh, yes, with unemployment at 9% you can start sending your resume around because the atmosphere where you work is downright offensive. And you can use up a sick day for each interview you get, assuming you get any.

I personally am particular about what people say to me, how they say it, where they say it, and when they say it. And my response when I don't like what I hear is to walk away. But jobs are not that easy to walk away from.

Oh, yes, it's 2011, and we are all so the same when it comes to . . . Wait a minute. The same? What are we the same about? One man's fish is another man's poisson.

You have dirty jokes and "just kidding" sexual advances I don't want to hear? They are not appropriate in an environment where I am trapped because I need a paycheck. Not to mention that if I actually enjoy my job, I don't want my concentration broken because you feel like expressing yourself sexually in my face.

Re: "In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risqué Remarks" (11/13/2011)

Ironic, isn't it.

2011-11-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

Editor,

If Italy's economy is so strong and Italy would run a surplus leaving debt service out of the calculation, the obvious question is: why did Italy's government borrow so much money?

And with 60% of Italy's debt being held by Italians, the obvious answer is: because Italy -- like all of the developed economies that drank the neoliberal Kool-Aid of "tax efficiency" and "international competitiveness" dreamed up in the 1980's to loot economies big and small -- replaced taxing corporations and rich people with borrowing from them.

Capitalists like making money on their money, and they do not like to spend it. So wages, after steadily rising with productivity for almost 50 years, flat-lined in the 1980's, and taxes paid by corporations and rich people plummeted.

Wages thus were replaced by personal debt, and tax receipts thus were replaced by sovereign debt.

All to the benefit of banks and other holders of that debt who enjoyed a whopping paycheck for sitting back and doing nothing. Now, of course, that these debt burdens have become too big to repay, the lenders are complaining that the debtors are lazy and do not want to work.

Ironic, isn't it.

Re: "Europe’s Banks Found Safety of Bonds a Costly Illusion" (11/11/2011)

Fail.

2011-11-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

Editor,

"[M]aking the structural changes that economists say Italy needs to quicken growth and stay competitive, including making its labor market more flexible, creating a more efficient tax code and tax collection system, and cutting red tape."

You can dress up neoliberalism any way you like, but neoliberalism it remains: a transnational capitalists' scam to shovel the wealth of nations into a few rapacious billionaires' hands.

"Structural adjustments," "austerity," privatization, "reduced red tape" (meaning deregulated transnational capital flight), "flexible labor" (meaning no unions), and the entire ugly plundering program were long again kicked out of Latin America along with the IMF when it was demonstrated unequivocally that neoliberalism amounts to misery for millions and opulence for a few.

The solutions being crammed down the public's throat in Europe are good for banks that by all rights should fail. Peddling debt whose only purpose is to make bankers rich has made its flash in the pan. It is not a sound foundation upon which to build an economy, and the banks that engaged in it should fail.

Re: "Greece and Italy Seek a Solution From Technocrats" (11/11/2011)

Time to fail.

2011-11-09T12:46:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Demands for "austerity" are the epitome of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Laying off government workers and thus reducing income tax revenues as well as increasing unemployment; decreasing consumers' disposable income (for those who have an income) by raising property taxes; privatizing and thus increasing the price to consumers of government services; not to mention cutting taxes on the rich, all guarantee that economies subjected to this short-sighted policy -- whether they be Greece, Italy, Ireland, the UK, France, or the USA -- will never be able to grow their GDP sufficiently to pay off their debts.

Banks and other international speculators who made loans they should not have made should not be paid. The era of overly financialized economies has ended. Selling debt instead of capitalizing industry is a failed business model. This is clear to anyone with eyes to see.

The time has come for banks that serve no useful function for society as a whole and whose only purpose is to funnel wealth up into the hands of a tiny few to fail, be dismembered, and be replaced by a public banking system whose mission is to finance meaningful economic activity.

Re: "As Italy’s Cost of Borrowing Surges, Europe Shudders" (11/10/2011)

Cain

2011-11-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

Editor,

Cain is a clown hired by the Koch Bros. to front for the 1%. He is utterly incompetent to be president of the USA, and his candidacy, in addition to being a total joke, demonstrates the utter contempt in which the 1% hold the rest of the American public.

Cain is a grifter, happy to fly around in corporate jets and enjoy whatever other perks the 1% lay on him to run. If he were -- heaven forbid -- ever to win the Republican nomination and go on to "win" the general election (Republicans can't win general elections, they can only steal them) his job would be to rubber stamp whatever policies the 1% dictate from their feudal manors.

That this guy's candidacy for the presidency is even reported with a straight face shows just how much of a banana republic the USA has become.

Re: "Cain Speaks Out to Deny Charges; 2nd Voice Heard" (11/9/2011)

A sorry excuse.

2011-11-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

Editor,

I see a government that feels no compunction whatsoever about loosing heavily armed, violent, uniformed thugs to gas, beat, injure, and arrest unarmed protesters exercising their 1st Amendment rights to assembly, free speech, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances while simultaneously refusing to prosecute not only Bush administration officials who proudly trumpet their war crimes, but also bankers and others who crashed the global economy with fraudulent financial activity that has been exhaustively documented.

The Obama administration is a disgrace, a sorry excuse for an executive branch, a willing instrument of the financial criminal class, a perpetually electioneering substitute for a government Americans can believe in.

Re: "Letting the Banks Off Easy" (11/9/2011)

Waste.

2011-11-07T21:54:00.001-08:00

Editor,

In economic terms, spending on "defense" -- buying weapons of mass destruction and paying to maintain a large standing army -- is consumptive.

In contrast, spending on education, infrastructure, and health care are stimulative because the dollars spent improve the profitability of businesses.

For example, building a freeway into an undeveloped area provides opportunity for developers and other "job creators" to build housing developments and shopping malls, with all the follow-on business activity and employment these entail.

If the government buys a tank or an aircraft carrier, the government owns it and must spend precious taxpayer dollars on manning and maintaining it. No growth in GDP is stimulated by such an expenditure, no future tax receipts are increased; no private sector jobs are created (beyond designing and building WMD) by "defense" spending.

For a party supposedly obsessed with decreasing the deficit and creating jobs, the Republicans certainly know how to waste a lot of money.

Re: "Staring Into the Budget’s Abyss" (11/8/2011)

Bend.

2011-11-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Although private sector banks have agreed to a 50% haircut, the EU central bank and the IMF, in the deal struck without Greek citizens' consent, will be paid 100 cents on the euro.

Mr. Papandreou has asserted finally that the EU and the IMF do not hold all the cards after all. The IMF, in fact, with its "Washington Consensus" guaranteeing misery for millions by distributing wealth up the great economic chain of being into the pockets of the rich, has already been kicked out of Latin America and most of the rest of the world.

The EU's deal with Greece has to be renegotiated with the understanding that default is a real possibility and "someone else" -- not widows and orphans -- is going to be the one to bend.

Re: "Greece on the Brink" (11/3/2011)

Postcard to Bill Keller.

2011-10-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Five weeks into a movement whose objective is to dismantle an economic coup d'etat that has been consolidating its power for more than 30 years, and Mr. Keller is impatient for "results."

Is Mr. Keller the last person on planet Earth to grasp the big-picture significance of the Occupy movement: that the institutional bases of American democracy have been coopted by transnational corporations and a financial sector that are brazenly looting everything that is not tied down?

You can't write the solution to this dysfunctional state of affairs on a postcard, and even if you do, people and institutions that are used to killing whoever gets in their way are not about to give up power willingly.

Re: "Beyond Occupy" (10/31/2011)

Tents.

2011-10-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Police officers and police departments possess broad discretion with regard to which laws they enforce and when they enforce them. Every jay walker, for example, is not cited. Every double-parker is not ticketed.

So the obvious question is: why did the Denver police choose to “move into the park to tear down illegal tents?”

Precisely how did those tents threaten public safety, and if they did, did the threat they posed outweigh the risk of potential injury to peaceful protesters as a result of aggressive police activity?

“Tearing down” the tents is not the only option the police had. Turning a blind eye is one. Negotiating terms with the occupiers according to which tents could be used is another.

This incident seems to have been preceded by several years of bad relations between what has been reported to have been an excessively violent and unresponsive Denver Police Department and the community they are sworn to protect. Attacking “tents” could be interpreted as a rogue police department imposing its vision of public safety on a community that understands public safety differently.

What exactly were the circumstances that resulted in this law about “illegal tents” being passed in the first place? What is it about the intent of the legislative body at the time that it enacted that law that necessitated a full-on military-style assault by hundreds of heavily armed police, against an unarmed peaceful assembly of citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights, to “tear down” tents?

Who ordered this attack and why?

Re: "Occupy Denver protesters, law enforcement officers clash; 20 arrested" (10/30/2011)

A clash of world views.

2011-10-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

Editor,

"Although Italy has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe (7.9 percent as of August), that’s because so many people aren’t looking for jobs. Only 57 percent of people ages 15 to 64 were employed in 2010, one of the lowest rates in the world. Whatever the official retirement age (60 for women, 65 for men), under Italy’s complex retirement laws anyone qualifies for a pension after 40 years of contributions, and thanks to earlier and more generous programs, many retire even sooner — over half a million Italians retired before age 50, according to a small business group report released this week."

We have a clash of world views here.

Debt mongers, corporations, and other global capitalists perceive the function of 99% of human beings to be to "work" and thus generate profits for the 1% who control the political and financial levers of human society.

Meanwhile people fighting for economic democracy view the function of the global economy to be to provide, in a democratically agreed fashion, the necessities of life -- food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, clean water, clean air, open space, cultural enrichment -- to human beings and their offspring, as well as to protect the life support systems of the planet Earth.

The paragraph I quoted from your article demonstrates the control that the corporate 1% have over the framing of the economic and social issues facing humanity at this time.

Re: "The Spotlight Now Shines on Italy" (10/29/2011)

Inevitable.

2011-10-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Pirates plundering a nation are not all of a sudden going to be nice guys and give up the control of the government they have bought with their billions.

They are going to loose their army of violent, fascist thugs to terrorize and intimidate peaceful protesters exercising their 1st Amendment rights, especially in a city like Oakland where police are used to shaking down and shooting down people of color with impunity.

And of course Fox "News" will disseminate fantastic lies. And the New York Times will report that "cities" are losing patience and cracking down.

No. "Cities" are not losing patience and cracking down. The 1% are running scared and behaving as cowardly despots do: sicking violent thugs on peaceful protesters. This is all they know.

The tide has turned. Remember what a field day the 1% have been having for the last 30 years? Now they are scared. That they will lose their war on the 99% is inevitable.

Re: "Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests" (10/28/2011)

Rick Perry's "plan."

2011-10-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Here is a tidbit from the Texas Medical Association in response to Gov. Perry's hatred for "Obamacare:"

"Texas is the uninsured capital of the United States. More than 5.8 million Texans - including 1.5 million children - lack health insurance. Texas' uninsurance rates, 1.5 to 2 times the national average, create significant problems in the financing and delivery of health care to all Texans. Those who lack insurance coverage typically enjoy far-worse health status than their insured counterparts."

If his "plan" were worth another 30 seconds of my time, I would find you what proportion of the Texas "jobs" he claims credit for are minimum wage jobs.

I can see people in the 1% who are consumed with greed getting behind Gov. Perry's candidacy, but anyone in the 99% who takes him seriously is crazy.

Re: "Perry Plan Would Grant Big Tax Break to Wealthiest" (10/26/2011)

Reality check.

2011-10-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Editor,

This is America. People are allowed to make $20 million a year here. But it matters how you make that $20 million.

Defrauding homeowners with mortgages law school professors do not understand, bundling worthless loans fraudulently rated AAA and selling them to major investors including European banks while simultaneously betting against them, and paying yourself 300 times as much as you did 30 years ago while simultaneously cutting the pay and slashing the benefits of people who work for you are not equivalent to creating a TV sitcom enjoyed by millions of viewers to nobody's detriment at all.

Dominating with enormous sums of money our nominal democracy so that policies that benefit the richest 1% and harm everybody else are adopted is not nice either.

You are going to have to try harder, Mr. Bruni, to discredit the Occupy movement and the millions of people from all walks of life who support it.

Re: "Hollywood on Wall Street" (10/23/2011)

Unethical at best.

2011-10-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

Editor,

This article points up the problem with corporate governance as it is currently conceived: a small number of people can corner decision-making power in a large, publicly owned corporation by obtaining ownership of a majority of shares.

This is why "self-regulation" of industry boils down to autocracy when democratically elected governments fail to exercise their authority as representatives of entire populations and cede policy-making to giant corporations that are controlled by a small, rich, and therefore powerful coterie. And of course that coterie seems almost always to be unethical at best, criminal at worst.

Re: "Irate News Corp. Shareholders to Take Murdoch to the Woodshed" (10/21/2011)

The impression opf punishment.

2011-10-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Amazing. Banks, by fiat, impose policies our government is not even capable of debating intelligently. No wonder the banks do whatever they want to consumers and agree only to pay token penalties when appearances require creating the impression of punishment for their most egregious crimes.

Re: "Rush to Drill for Natural Gas Creates Conflicts With Mortgages" (10/20/2011)

Republican politicians' job.

2011-10-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Republican politicians' job is to loot the American economy for their corporate bosses. That is why 9/11 happened on George W. Bush's watch: he was too busy gutting regulatory agencies and installing industry insiders as their heads to pay attention to intelligence that OBL was "determined to . . . blah blah blah."

So the current crop of Republican clowns will do what the war profiteers dictate if one of them ever takes up residence in the Oval Office. Until then all they are supposed to do is wear their hair and mouth meaningless nonsense. Fox News will do the rest.

The Democrats, meanwhile, field the thinking wo/man's corporate shill: more articulate, able to form coherent sentences, knows geography and how to spell, but working for the same big money as the Republican dopes.

Smart shill, dumb shill. What's the difference?

Re: "Republicans and Foreign Policy" (10/18/2011)

Back off now.

2011-10-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Speaking of the police in Peru, we are having a serious problem with the police -- and who they are taking their orders from -- in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and possibly a few other cities in this country.

We need to negotiate with these thugs to find out what their orders are, who is giving them, and to explain that their legitimate function in society is to protect the public from violence and crime.

A light needs to be shone brightly on whoever is turning these goons out to brutalize and intimidate protesters in classic fascist fashion.

And as for demands, demands are a trap that legitimates the hold on power factions have that are holding it. The goal is to take that power away from them, and this outcome is becoming more inevitable every day with or without the cooperation of the police.

For the police I see it as choice: Back off now or be prosecuted later.

Re: "Good News! No, Really!" (10/17/2011)

This article is ridiculous.

2011-10-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Editor,

This article ("Opposite Sides of the Protest Come Together, Briefly") is ridiculous.

"Wall Street" in common parlance and in the lexicon of the Occupy movement does not mean "underlings who work for financial institutions."

It means corrupt financial institutions, decision makers in corrupt financial institutions, and the antidemocratic concentration of political power in those corrupt institutions via corrupt financial relationships and a corrupt revolving door between those institutions and all branches of government.

Is the NYT really so clueless about what is going on in the streets of the entire world and so naive with regard to the concentration of wealth and power over the last 30 years that you think a conversation between Joe Stockbroker and a kid with his hat on sideways is what this movement is trying to achieve?

And the kid. Couldn't you have chosen a protester who is more politically sophisticated than a kid who is obviously suffering under the neoliberal regime but has only a vague, kid's understanding of how that regime is sucking the life-blood out of our society?

Set up an interview between me and a Wall Street CEO, don't edit what is said, and post it on your website. I would be willing to give that debate a crack, speaking only for myself, not representing anybody else.

Re: "Opposite Sides of the Protest Come Together, Briefly" (10/14/2011)

What is your agenda?

2011-10-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

Editor,

I can't imagine why Mr. Brooks left unemployment off his list of short-term problems and his list of long-term problems facing the American public. Unemployment is, after all, structural now in the sense that as much manufacturing, computer programming, customer service, and other employment as possible has been and is continuing to be permanently off-shored by the 1% of Americans who own, by virtue of having bought it, policy-making in the by-definition autocratic boardrooms of American business and the halls of American government.

I can't imagine either why Mr. Brooks would refer to the Occupy Wall Street movement as a "sideshow."

Certainly when the 95% of Americans who together own only as much wealth as the richest 5% assemble in the streets to voice their dissatisfaction with Wall Street practices, condoned by a government captured by deep-pocketed campaign contributors and high-priced lobbyists, that have resulted in millions of home foreclosures, indentured servitude for college graduates, mass layoffs of public school teachers, crumbling infrastructure, multi-trillion-dollar military adventures abroad, declining real wages for the last 30 years, the disappearance of defined -benefit pensions, a full-frontal assault on labor unions, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and huge giveaways of taxpayers' dollars to Wall Street banks and other giant corporations, such a demonstration is hardly a sideshow. It is the beginning of an honest, meaning not distorted by corporate media, public conversation about how to correct the corruption and inequality that have come to define business and politics in the United States.

I can't imagine either why Mr. Brooks played the antisemitic card in this op-ed, against Ad Busters, in order to tar with a brush that thousands of demonstrators are entirely unaware of a movement that is inclusive to a fault of every conceivable minority, majority, and individual in its conception and its process.

What is your agenda, Mr. Brooks?

Re: "The Milquetoast Radicals" (10/11/2011)

This is reporting?

2011-10-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

Editor,

According to your article "Wall Street Protest Spurs Online Dialogue on Inequity" (10/9/2011): “A video showing female protesters being held back by the police is the most-viewed of the protest, according to Matt McLernon, a spokesman for YouTube.”

What this video portrays, as clear as day, is NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna gratuitously spraying Mace, at point blank range, directly into the eyes of a handful of young women corralled by orange netting and doing absolutely nothing illegal, violent, or threatening to him or anyone else.

Why did the NYT choose not to report accurately why the video cited is the most-viewed of the protest?

Re: "Wall Street Protest Spurs Online Dialogue on Inequity" (10/9/2011)

My hope.

2011-10-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Editor,

My hope is that the Occupy movement will become so widespread and so popular that citizen candidates aligned with neither the Republican nor the Democratic party but clearly cognizant of the destructive power of corporate rule will arise in precincts around the nation and sweep status quo politicians out of office in a landslide from coast to coast.

This is an election season, after all, and to hand "demands" to business-as-usual politicians -- to put the ball in their court as it were -- is a trap this movement should avoid at all costs.

The 99% should not make "demands" to a power structure that is controlled by the 1%. The 99% should wrest power out of the hands of that 1% by peaceful electoral means and show once and for all that self-government as defined and systematized by the Founders can work to "promote the general welfare" of this nation.

Re: "Confronting the Malefactors" (10/7/2011)

Baloney.

2011-10-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

Editor,

"Austerity" means not only that banks that engage in reckless speculation will be paid for making their bad bets, but also that these self-same banks will remain in control of the financial levers in Europe, the U.S., and the global economy.

This is wrong. Failed banks should fail, and they should be replaced with more responsible, better managed banks under tighter scrutiny and tighter control by democratic institutions. Taxpayers pay for bank bailouts anyway; and citizens and small businesses suffer under "austerity" anyway.

The only argument banks have to gobble up public wealth for their own private consumption is that if they fail, economic armageddon will ensue. Baloney. National banks, meaning banks that are owned, run, and capitalized by citizens of sovereign nations can do the job of financing industry and would recycle their profits into investments that benefit society as a whole instead of a predatory coterie of private bankers.

Rescuing rogue banks leaves the private, undemocratic power structure that created this debacle in place when goal number one should be to eliminate this cancer from the body politic.

Re: "Europe Finds Slope Ahead Is Growing Ever Steeper" (10/5/2011)

Running the show.

2011-10-03T21:15:00.001-07:00

Editor,

This article ("On Wall Street, a Protest Matures") comes close to articulating the fundamental issue confronting our society but fails finally to unravel it. Individuals across the planet are dependent on corporations for a dizzying list of essential goods and services as the protesters' trips to the Bank of America ATM mentioned in the article illustrate.

But corporations' practices -- from stripping workers' share of the economic pie, and their rights, to the bone to arrogating enormous political power, by buying it in nominal democracies for their own aggrandizement at everyone else's and the planet's expense -- are harmful to society and must be brought under democratic control.

Ending rule by corporations, by getting their money and their lobbyists out of politics and getting the democratic will of the public into corporate governance, is the defining challenge for capitalism in our epoch.

Fat cats used to running the world and getting filthy rich by ruining it and impoverishing 99% of humanity will squirm and loose their goons to manhandle and murder people to retain the privileges to which they think they are entitled, but ultimately I am confident the human race will win whether the people running the show right now wake up and join humanity or not.

Re: "On Wall Street, a Protest Matures" (10/3/2011)

Shifting the blame.

2011-10-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

Editor:

It only takes 20 minutes to shift the blame.
JPEG of side-by-side versions of this story published online at 6:59 pm and 7:19 pm 10/1/2011:
http://www.billappledorf.com/316076.jpg.

Re: "Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge" (10/1/2011)

Wrong.

2011-09-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Just as corporations are sitting on mountains of cash and not investing it because they have no need for new plant and equipment or employees, banks are sitting on a mountain of cheap money that the Federal Reserve has made available to them but the banks are not loaning because businesses do not need it and consumers are too indebted to borrow.

So not only are the disingenuous Republicans pushing fiscal policies that are 180 degrees at odds with what our economy needs, but the Federal Reserve is also pursuing monetary policies that make zombie banks look profitable but rob the American people of purchasing power and adequate interest on their savings.

Banks do not lend after and because they receive infusions of capital. They borrow infusions of capital after and because they have lent.

It is still not too late to nationalize miscreant banks, prosecute miscreant banking executives, and bail out mortgagees instead of continuing the wrong-headed policies of Timothy Geithner and his predecessors.

Re: "Phony Fear Factor" (9/30/2011)

Mr. Obama Goes to Washington.

2011-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Mr. Obama talks the talk when he is campaigning but he does not walk the walk. He has failed to argue convincingly and resolutely so many times for the values, principles, and policies he claimed in the 2008 election cycle to represent that I can't list them all.

Why should we believe his "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" act now?

Re: "An Icy Political Vision" (9/30/2011)

Why not?

2011-09-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

Editor,

"But a bailout doesn’t mean wiping out the huge debts that have taken years to accumulate — just as bailing out American banks in 2008 didn’t mean wiping out the huge amount of subprime debt that homeowners had borrowed but couldn’t repay."

Why not? David Graeber in his book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" documents jubilees and other erasures of debt that have taken place throughout history.

Insisting that 99% of the population pay loans that were irresponsibly extended by the other 1% -- which is already resulting in widespread poverty, homelessness, and debt peonage -- so that the 1% can wallow in opulence is already causing social unrest and will, unless abated, lead to increasing societal disintegration.

These are precisely the reasons why the slate of debt was wiped clean in antiquity and will be ultimately in our own epoch -- unless violent revolution or full-blown fascism arrive first, as occurred in the 20th century.

Re: "Even if Europe Averts Crisis, Growth May Lag for Years" (9/30/2011)

Banks.

2011-09-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

Editor,

German public opposes bailout. Greek public opposes austerity. Who do EU politicians represent (as do politicians in the USA)? Banks. Isn't it about time that banks -- and the IMF -- be accountable to the will of the people and bankers be punished for their reckless, greedy, destructive behavior?

Re: "Germany Approves Expansion of Euro Bailout Fund" (9/30/2011)

Protest.

2011-09-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

Editor,

No. It is not wariness toward the political process. It is hatred for the thin slice of corporate, financial, and aristocratic thieves who have coopted government for their own ends and are stuffing all of the wealth of the human race into their own pockets, leaving everyone else impoverished and enslaved.

Re: "As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe" (9/28/2011)

Sucking us under.

2011-09-27T17:50:00.001-07:00

Editor,

Are the Republicans in this country listening to the futility of cutting, cutting, and cutting spending -- aka austerity?

And do they still not understand the necessity to raise revenue -- via taxing the unproductive capital hoarded by corporations and the rich -- to spend on infrastructure repair and other investments in our nation's future, putting wages in unemployed workers' pockets, to jump start our economy?

Republicans must understand that "tax, borrow, and spend" are one half of the stimulus equation. It is imperative not to cut taxes, as Republicans inevitably do, once the economy is growing again because continuing to collect that tax revenue is essential to pay back the money borrowed to hire the unemployed.

Also: Neoclassical monetary policy, which asserts that putting capital in the hands of banks will stimulate the banks to lend, sounds good in the a priori armchair, but how banks really work is they lend first then borrow capital to bolster their reserves. This is why Federal reserve monetary policy is failing. Bolstering bank reserves when banks are not lending is putting the theoretical cart before the empirical horse. Only fiscal stimulus can rescue us from the economic quicksand that is sucking us under.

Re: "Europe Nears Agreement on Bailout Fund That May Be Inadequate" (9/28/2011)

The opposite.

2011-09-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Monetary policy alone cannot bootstrap an economy out of a depression, and austerity is the exact opposite of what the global economy needs. Lowering interest rates in the hope that unemployed people will borrow themselves a job is well intentioned but wishful thinking.

The employer of last resort is the government. Putting wages in otherwise unemployed workers' pockets would increase demand and improve business. When businesses recovered and tax receipts therefore increased, the money you borrowed to stimulate the economy would be paid back.

But a now murderous ideology about not taxing an imaginary job-creating superior race one cent to keep supposedly inferior people who are economic parasites alive has captured the minds of millions of uninformed voters.

And here we are: cutting spending when it should be increasing, firing government employees when more should be hired, lowering taxes on unproductive capital when they should be raised.

Re: "Wall Street Joins Global Stock Plunge After Fed Move" (9/23/2011)

Abused.

2011-09-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

Editor,

It sounds to me like Mr. Perry was physically abused as a boy by his father who beat him with a belt. It therefore isn't hard to understand where his cruelty and lack of empathy -- for death row inmates of questionable guilt, for example -- come from. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was similarly abused and is similarly proud of his utter lack of compassion for suffering human beings. This is a common story and demonstrates transparently how feeling hurt and scared translate into arrogant bravado and phony tough-guy revenge directed toward any person or animal who is similarly weak and abused.

Re: "Paint Creek, the Town Perry Left Behind" (9/19/2011)

Sick laws.

2011-09-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Republicans hold out a gun in every hand as the solution to the ever increasing economic inequality they are engineering in this country. It fits with their pledge not to tax anybody who has money, only wage slaves and poor people, because their vision is that guns protect the property of the haves from have nots who are presumably out to steal it. This reminds me of the interminable paranoia Southern whites felt about -- and the sick laws they enacted to protect themselves from -- slaves getting together and revolting.

Re: "Packing Heat Everywhere" (9/19/2011)

Consolidation.

2011-09-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Republicans do not want to save our economy or the United States of America. They want to impoverish the American people and consolidate rule by unregulated corporations and the very rich.

Re: "The Bleeding Cure" (9/19/2011)

On Republican sabotage.

2011-09-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

Editor,

If Republicans want to lead this country for the good of the nation, why on Earth would they do such terrible economic violence to it in order to be elected? Doesn't this tactic show that Republicans hate this country and the American people? Why else would they try to destroy it? And if they were to win unanimous control of the government, would they not make an even more concerted effort to destroy the United States and impoverish the American people?

Re: "Fill in the Blanks" (9/19/2011)

Unforgivable.

2011-09-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Editor,

When I was 25, if someone told me that rather than to have Social Security and Medicare contributions deducted from my paycheck I could take home that money and spend it however I wanted, I would have leapt at the offer -- because at the age of 25 I unconsciously, irrationally, and magically assumed that I would never grow old. Saving for my retirement, which Social Security is, had as much reality in my universe as living on a distant star.

For the Republican party to woo youngsters, who have no concept of aging and even less of retiring, with promises of using their erstwhile FICA deductions to get rich in the stock market, is the most cynical, despicable manipulation I have seen since the invasion of Iraq.

Elders in a society have a sacred -- yes, sacred -- duty to look out for the interests of our young. For a political party to mock this obligation in order to put a few more billion dollars in their patrons' pockets is unforgivable.

Re: "Support for Obama Slips; Unease on 2012 Candidates" (9/17/2011)

They can't even remember.

2011-09-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Germany and France are applying the same logic to Greece that the Republicans are to the United States: exacerbating unemployment by demanding cuts in government spending, thus laying of government workers, and worsening the depression by demanding that creditors be paid 100 cents on the dollar -- now -- rather than stimulating demand by stimulating the economy with fiscal policy.

Everybody knows that monetary policy can only achieve the illusion of recovery by propping up bankers' balance sheets and artificially inflating stock prices. Besides, if the problem is debt that cannot be repaid, peddling the victim more debt is only going to make the unpaid balance bigger.

Also, China is going to own the Monopoly board when this game is over because the Chinese financial sector invests in industry while Western capitalists are so used to gambling on imaginary paper abstractions they can't even remember how to do it.

Re: "Germany and France Back Greece on Austerity Effort" (9/15/2011)

"Obama, Pelosi, Reid."

2011-09-12T17:02:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Requiring people who can afford to pay more taxes to pay more taxes and using that money to hire unemployed workers is not "redistributing income from one group to another." It is putting money to work by using it to pay wages, which are spent on goods and services, which in turn increases demand for businesses' products and thus increases businesses' need -- and their ability to pay for -- more employees. This is how "stimulating the economy" works.

Republicans prefer that the Federal Reserve "stimulate the economy" with monetary policy, namely keeping interest rates low, which makes stocks more expensive but reduces the amount of interest you earn on your savings account and increases the price of goods you buy that are produced in and imported from other countries.

I can appreciate that a loyal Tea Party know-nothing would prefer to pay out of their own pocket to increase Goldman Sachs's bottom line and increase Wall Street bankers' bonuses than to put their unemployed neighbors to work, but then it's all about "Obama, Pelosi, Reed" and how they are taking money away from the "job creators," isn't it?

Re: "White House Would Cut Deductions to Pay for Its Jobs Plan" (9/12/2011)

Corporate fiscal stimulus plan.

2011-09-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Regarding corporate profits, which one of the analysts in your article mentioned:

It is well documented and widely understood that since 1980 wages paid to corporate workers have flat-lined or decreased slightly, while productivity has continued to grow at the same pace it always has since WWII. Workers have turned spouses out to work, then mortgaged their houses and run up credit card and other debt to their eyeballs to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

It is also common knowledge that defined-benefit pensions have gone the way of trade unions and the dodo bird, to be replaced by IRA's, the average value of which is something like $30,000 or less -- hardly enough to retire on for 20 or 30 years when one reaches the age of 65.

My point: Corporations are reaping the lion's share of the value American workers create, and at this time corporations are sitting on something-trillion dollars of cash. Since corporations view themselves as our government anyway -- and buy the real one -- why don't the corporations agree on a fiscal stimulus plan, something like a 3% raise across the board, or a 12% bonus, for all non-management personnel.

No one can get the federal government to initiate a CCC- or WPA-style stimulus, so why don't our corporate good-citizen neighbors step up and put some real disposable income in the hands of the American working class to stimulate demand?

Now here is the problem: Products are almost universally manufactured off-shore, so the money spent will leave the USA. Furthermore, heavily-indebted working families will probably pay down their debts with their windfall. The banks, therefore will also need to participate in this plan to recycle the uptick they will see in debt pay-downs.

Stay tuned for ideas on how to get the money banks see into circulation. For now let's work on getting corporations to stimulate our economy by paying some of those back wages they have been holding out on for the last 30 years.

Re: "More Volatility as Stocks Drop Sharply" (9/10/2011)

CCC. WPA.

2011-09-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

Editor,

From Wikipedia:
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide employment for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 2.5 million young men participated. Reserve officers from the U.S. Army were in charge of the camps, but there was no military training or uniforms.

From Wikipedia:
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western areas. The budget at the outset of the WPA in 1935 was $1.4 billion a year (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP), and in total it spent $13.4 billion. At its peak in 1938 it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men (and some women), as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. Full employment, which emerged as a national goal around 1944, was not the WPA goal. It tried to provide one paid job for all families where the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.

Re: "Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Spur in Hiring" (9/10/2011)

The hour is getting late.

2011-09-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Here is what Mr. Obama is up against: giant multinational corporations so flush with billions of political war-chest dollars after 30 years of off-shoring, deregulation, privatization, tax incentives, and tax loopholes that they can pay their "think" tank, FOX "News," and right-wing radio nattering nabobs of negativism to nip and nip and nip away his -- and every American's -- heels with their "Socialism! Socialism! Socialism! Socialism!" fascist war cry (yes, scapegoating socialism is a fascist tactic -- look it up) and other vile idiocy.

The intellectual goons the corporations hire to do their "theorizing," "science," "economics," and non-stop 1984-style propaganda they call "journalism" probably actually believe in the drivel big bucks provides their tiny minds a platform to up-chuck over any and every idea, proposal, or solution that Mr. Obama or anybody else suggests that government should undertake -- because the people who hire them do not want a government. They want to govern. For themselves. So that they can enslave the rest of the human race and wallow in unimaginable riches.

Read a book! Look who you are dealing with directly in their predatory eye when they tell you that EdCo International is going to teach your kids history, science, and economics. Look who you are dealing with when their genius henchmen tell you they are going to kick Grandma off of Social Security because Goldman Sachs will do a better job of taking care of her. Wake up, America.

Depressions are the fascists' closest friends. There go unions. There go immigrants. There go religious minorities. There goes habeus corpus. Here comes perpetual war, a police state, gulags and concentration camps for "Socialists!" and other enemies of the corporations. Who are all those madmen armed to the teeth with assault rifles going to protect? You? Wake up, America. The hour is getting late.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

2011-09-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Editor,

A real stimulus would simultaneously address real needs our country faces: construction of high-speed rail and other mass transit infrastructure, solar panels on every rooftop in America, smart grid development, and the usual infrastructure repairs that are put off year after year: roads, bridges, levees, schools, water mains, sewage treatment facilities, airports, etc., etc., etc. Our country is falling apart because multinational corporations and the mega-rich do not care to spend anything on rejuvenating it: the big bucks are to be made in China and 3rd-world "free trade zones."

And then there is education. All the bloviators prattle on about how American "innovation" and "technology" and "entrepreneurialism" are going to win the race to "lead the world," while simultaneously firing thousands of teachers, cutting funds to public schools, hobbling the very educational process with excessive testing and crazy ideological warfare over what American kids can be taught, attacking teachers' unions, and creating a nation of functionally illiterate college graduates and mentally disturbed high school drop-outs.

Oh, yes. The payroll tax cut. Bravo. Clap. Clap. Clap.

Re: "Some in G.O.P. Seem Open to Obama Call for Payroll Tax Cut" (9/9/2011)

Now is the time.

2011-09-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

Editor,

It takes a certain kind of smarts to manipulate the masses emotionally: Hitler, Mussolini.

It takes another kind of smarts to understand science (Einstein, Newton) or economics (Keynes, Galbraith).

And it takes another kind of smarts to influence the U.S. Congress (FDR, LBJ) to support your policies whether they like them or not.

Unfortunately, Obama understands the subtleties inherent in lofty idealistic philosophies and is very good at composing rhetoric that reflects his vision. But he is no MLK, and he is no JFK because, although he was once capable of inspiring, he does not possess a personality that lends itself naturally to lead.

For us to rag on Obama is the wrong response to this unfortunate reality. The DNC picked the wrong guy to bear their standard in 2008, and unless the Democratic Party truly is the flip side of the corporate coin the Republicans clearly grace, it is time to find another candidate for president, one who can cut through the seamlessly orchestrated propaganda of the right, speak truth to the American people in terms they can understand, and twist the arms and ears of recalcitrant Republican politicians to turn this country around.

Obama is a punching bag for a very nasty crowd whose motto is: "I've got mine. It's every man for himself." If this is the kind of country the DNC wants Americans to inhabit, then they can run their man Obama again, and he and the Republicans will run the USA into the ground. Otherwise, now is the moment. Now is the time for a change.

Re: "Pass, Fail and Politics" (9/4/2011)

Crazy Nonsense.

2011-08-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Hurricane Irene will look like an April shower next to the meteorological cataclysms we will be experiencing in coming years unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

Not to mention the environmental catastrophes we will witness as BP-Macondo style oil spills occur in pristine arctic wilderness.

And it isn't as though there are no renewable energy solutions. There are. What there is not is the political will to save the human race. And those who lack this will continue to do everything in their power to keep millions of people brainwashed, ignorant, and believing crazy nonsense.

Re: "Exxon Wins Prized Access to Arctic With Russia Deal" (8/31/2011)

Here.

2011-08-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Your editorial "Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet" assumes that corporations' interests and the general populations' are the same, but this is not the case.

Why would millions of jobs and thousands of factories have been off-shored if it were? Why would workers' wages be flat to negative over the last 30 years? Why would the few unions still left standing on the American landscape be under withering attack? Why would banks not homeowners be helped to remain solvent? Why does right-wing media demonize mainstream economists, scientists, and sociologists day in and day out?

The more I read about debt peonage through the ages the more I understand that money and power have been and are the only interests of the ruling elite anywhere at any time. Military conquest, opulence, and domination through slavery, serfdom, and indentured servitude all add up to one theme that is repeated again and again.

The American middle class was a short-lived anomaly, a consequence of the revolt by organized labor before and after WWII at a time when big money was truly fearful of an articulate, organized, and popular left, a left that does not exist anywhere anymore.

What scares me more than the creeping impoverishment and ultimate enslavement of today's American middle class is fascism: an aggrieved right-wing movement who see themselves as victimized by the left, rely on magical thinking for solutions to economic, political, and environmental problems, and -- the last and most frightening piece -- become utterly lawless in their pursuit of power: murdering political opponents, disappearing intellectuals and journalists, and enforcing the parameters of their rule with a brutal police apparatus.

It has happened before. You're dreaming if you don't think it can happen again. Here.

Re: "Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet" (8/21/2011)

In the pockets of the rich.

2011-08-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Editor,

In the NYT article yesterday blasting as a pipe dream Van Jones's vision of "Green Jobs" revitalizing the American economy, certain assumptions stood out like a sore thumb, and the NYT did not allow readers to comment there. But a comment here on this article as well as that is a propos.

If we are going to install solar panels on every rooftop in America, it is obvious that those solar panels should be manufactured in the USA, not China.

Furthermore, the objective in a massive WPA-like program, in order to provide real benefits for this nation's economy as well as putting millions of people to work, is not to maximize the profits of the companies to which the federal government contracts out the project.

In fact, this, in addition to campaign financing, is the fundamental structural problem in the way our government does business: government contracts are managed to maximize profits for corporations; they are not managed to maximize economic benefit to "the American people," to whom politicians are forever paying lip service as they stab us in the back.

A green jobs agenda that stipulates its ancillary manufacturing must be done in the USA, specifically to cycle tax money into the hands of American workers at the **American** wage scale, as opposed to that in Cambodia, would turn our economy around overnight.

But here is the issue: Our government, as everyone on these comment blogs knows, does not represent "the American people" It represents Wall Street, billionaires, and multinational corporations; and these actors are in the business specifically of funneling dollars up the financial pyramid, from workers' to their own pockets, by whatever means they can imagine.

So even massive government spending, which the current economy demands, would not wind up in worker's hands but in the pockets of the corporations and the rich.

Re: "U.S. Stocks Lower After Drops in Asia and Europe" (8/20/2011)

Do not hold your breath.

2011-08-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Editor,

I recently read "Slavery: A World History" by Milton Meltzer, which dovetails nicely with "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, which I am reading now.

The bottom line is that our masters of the universe today do not seem to be thinking at all differently than the masters of the universe did in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Middle Ages and Renaissance Europe, and 18th Century America -- to name a few -- in that our poverty, our imprisonment, our enslavement, and that of our family, friends, and neighbors does not upset the rich and powerful who benefit from it in the least.

What I am trying to say is: it really is true that the ruling class does not give up its power voluntarily, and my own personal corollary: that the ruling class makes money on everyone else's misery until everyone else puts a stop to it. Do not hold your breath waiting for people who are happy to enslave you or let you starve to care about you, your prosperity, or what you think about it.

Re: "The Wrong Idea" (8/19/2011)

Spending.

2011-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Most countries in the global south over the last 10 years have kicked out the IMF and their "Washington consensus" scam -- called "economic restructuring" -- which boils down to creditors (banks, rich "investors") being paid every penny irresponsible right-wing governments borrowed from them no matter how severely the vast majority of their populations suffer what is now euphemistically called "austerity."

The American public still has not wised up to this scam.

Right-wing media and the mainstream press frame what is in actuality a depression -- which can only be corrected with government spending -- and the most impressive larceny in our lifetimes by Wall Street and the banks as "too much government spending."

No. The problem is not too much government spending, and the solution is not what all American media except the independent press keep repeating is "spending reform." The problem is creditors who deserve to lose their shirts owning our government and using it to drive all of us into poverty so that they get paid -- and pay no taxes on their spoils when they do.

Re: "Amid Skepticism, Debt Panel Pressed to Make Deal" (8/18/2011)

Not rocket science.

2011-08-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Solar panels on every rooftop in America, made in the USA, installed by local workers hired by the states with federal dollars.

Smart grid research, development, and deployment, all components made in the USA, funded by federal grants (not tax rebates) for R&D and built by American workers paid with federal dollars.

Think CCC. Think WPA. Think Hoover Dam. Think TVA. Think rural electrification. This is not rocket science.

Re: "His Anger Is a Start" (8/17/2011)

Crash.

2011-08-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

Editor,

No reason to hire anyone if all they are going to do is sit around. Businesses are not daycare centers after all.

Have you noticed that one Euro costs $1.45 these days? Or that one US dollar is worth about 95 Canadian cents? Or that tax revenues in California will not meet the rosy predictions upon which the budget passed recently was based? So that billions more will be cut from California's schools and Universities, once among the best in the nation?

Whether "the economy" is going to crash and burn technically is a matter of debate among people trying to talk stock holders into selling their shares cheap. But that the once lofty American standard of living is crashing and burning, because rich people refuse to pay taxes and are cramming "austerity," which no one wants and is the exact opposite medicine this "economy" needs, is obvious.

Stores are full of Chinese garbage that falls apart after you've been using it for a week. Who can afford to buy anything with better quality? Oh. European tourists. I am happy for them. I just wish our dollars were worth enough so I could go to Europe and be out of here when the real crash, the crash of American society, arrives.

Re: "Divining New York’s Fate Should a Double-Dip Recession Hit" (8/15/2011)

Down, down, down.

2011-08-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

Editor,

In another front-page article in today's online NYT Obama's plan to stimulate the economy is reported to be his getting reelected a year and a half from now!

Yes, Michelle Bachmann and her ilk are the new American Fascists. But what is Obama thinking? We have a president who watches as the U.S.A. drains down the tubes and a Republican cadre with a plumber's helper in hand to plunge us down.

India's new middle class is 300 million people strong. That is almost the entire population of the U.S.A.

Friends, the multinationals do not need us anymore, and we are being dumped. Now the slow-motion depression we have been watching unfold is reaching the stage where federal, state, and local governments are so revenue-challenged -- due to unemployment and rich people's refusal to pay taxes -- that basic services we have taken for granted our whole lives are being curtailed altogether: not least, public education and health care for old, young, and poor people.

The U.S. is like a mining town where the vein has played out. The extracting companies load their gear on trucks and pull out of town. The economy packs up and leaves. Beware the Republicans! Totalitarians have a nasty habit of seizing power in conditions such as are rapidly developing here.

I spend a lot of time looking at the map trying to decide where I am going to go to hunker down. But American money is worth less as every day goes by. My choices are increasingly limited to 3rd World countries, another of which the U.S.A. is rapidly becoming.

Re: "Bachmann Faces Tough Questioning on Sunday Shows" (8/14/2011)

Compromise.

2011-08-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Editor,

The multinationals have cut loose American workers because markets in the developing economies are so enormous the corporations figure that with clever financing even workers who make $5 a day can buy products that are manufactured there for export now.

This explains, I think, why the right refuses to spend on infrastructure or alternative energy development here: They would rather forget about the U.S.A. because there are plenty of consumers where the cheap labor is if the balance can be struck just right.

Am I being paranoid? Not really. China is Volkswagon's #1 market, and BMW and Mercedes are not far behind (per a NYT article about domestic consumption in China a few weeks ago).

The American economy can be goosed almost effortlessly because the dollar is the world's reserve currency -- a unique advantage. But people who have big money don't want to spend it here. Hence pathetic tax revenues and no "stimulus" beyond tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the poor.

Besides, even if the Republicans in a wild and crazy moment did agree to spend money here at home, they would give it to banks (as they have) and private corporations (as they do) -- who are experts at ripping of taxpayers -- instead of to workers, who would spend their wages immediately.

I agree with the rating agencies that the problem in this country is political, and although the issue today is slightly different than that in the 40 years preceding the Civil War, the politics are just about the same: attempt after attempt at "compromises" that are not compromises at all.

Re: "Where Will Growth Come From?" (8/11/2011)

And soon.

2011-08-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

Editor,

As the manager of the world's reserve currency, the U.S. owes it to the global economy to print, not borrow, however many trillions it takes to put its unemployed workers to work building and repairing infrastructure and developing alternative energy technology.

This will stimulate domestic and global demand, much as WWII did during the Great Depression.

Tea Bag ignoramuses, with their quaint homilies and idiotic theories that conflate families balancing their checkbooks with governments managing modern economies, will destroy capitalism altogether if they are not brought to heel, and soon.

Re: "Market Rally in U.S. and Asia Starts to Falter in Europe" (8/11/2011)

The real problem.

2011-08-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

Editor,

S&P justifies its downgrade on U.S. Treasuries because they lack confidence that the U.S. has the political will to "get its deficit under control." This is more right-wing blackmail and cleverly slips right-wing framing into the debate as fact.

But the fact is that American long-term debt is not the urgent problem it is cracked up to be.

The real problem is unemployment, and right-wing geniuses like S&P, who love monetary stimulus because it props up the stock and bond market houses of cards, militate vehemently against fiscal stimulus, which is exactly the right medicine for this economy if only they would allow it to be administered.

Re: "Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt" (8/8/2011)

Beyond me.

2011-08-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Businesses "create jobs" when they do not have enough employees to keep up with demand for their products or services.

When demand is depressed because consumers are unemployed or otherwise unable or unwilling to spend money, there is no reason for a business to "create jobs." Why on Earth would a business in such an economy spend money "creating jobs" to produce goods for which there is no market?

That is why government steps in, borrows money, and "creates jobs" in a depressed economic environment. When unemployment is high, business is bad, and businesses have no reason to "create jobs," government hires people to do much-needed work repairing infrastructure, thus putting money in these employees' pockets, increasing demand for goods and services, and bootstrapping the economy.

Why Republicans refuse to understand this, unless they are truly evil accomplices of ruthless thieves, is utterly beyond me.

re: "Downgrade Debate Moves to Talk Shows" (8/7/2011)

BFD.

2011-08-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

Editor,

bin Laden is an irrelevant side show who never would have pulled off 9/11 if Cheney-Bush were doing their job in 2001 instead of working overtime on facilitating the looting of the American economy for their fat-cat pals.

So Obama sent some SEALS to off him. We are supposed to be impressed? BFD. We would be more impressed if Obama took an introductory class in negotiating and showed us his certificate proving that he passed.

Re: "Downgrade Blues" (8/7/2011)

The score.

2011-08-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

Editor,

NYT commenters know the Keynesian score, but it is truly frightening to read comments on a site like MarketWatch.com, where genius men-in-the-street, thoroughly bamboozled by Rupert Murdoch, et. al., spew amazingly ignorant drivel to the effect that: "Obama is killing jobs," or "the EPA is killing jobs," or "Obama is spending the country into oblivion." It is so disheartening to read products like this of the stupidity and ignorance of the average American consumer of mass media I find myself thinking again and again all day: "Where can I run to escape from this?"

Re: "The Wrong Worries" (8/5/2011)

Dopes

2011-08-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Austerity is not the correct treatment for economic depression. This was proved in 1937. Right-wing ideologues, with specious arguments about the EPA causing businesses not to hire (!), and similar alternate-reality theories of economics, refuse to understand that when demand is severely compromised, massive debt-financed government spending is the stimulant of last resort. Idiots like Grover Norquist and his know-nothing Tea Bag followers are an exponentially greater threat to the security of the U.S.A. than homicidal dopes like al Qaeda could in their wildest dreams ever hope to be.

Re: "Stocks Plunge on Fears of Global Turmoil" (8/5/2011)

Tea Bags.

2011-07-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Tea Bags do not know anything about economics. Neither do the people who voted for them. They all speak in broad, simple-minded generalizations that are not even grounded in actual facts. Talking to Tea Bags and their constituents is like talking to a wall: fruitless. We are doomed.

Re: "Meanwhile, Back in the Economy" (7/31/2011)

Republicans and "spend, spend, spend."

2011-07-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Editor,

No. It is the Republicans who spend, spend, spend. Like drunken sailors. And they run the national debt up to the stratosphere.

Ronald Reagan's 400-ship navy. George W. Bush's multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, unfunded Part-D prescription drug enhancement to Medicare, and two trillion-dollar wars paid for with borrowed money.

Then when the Democrats come to power, the Republicans suddenly become fiscally conservative and blame the debts they ran up on the Democrats.

Bill Clinton cut spending, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and handed George Bush a budget surplus, which Bush promptly gave away to millionaires and billionaires in tax cuts they did not need and squandered on his wars.

This is not to mention the melt-down of the financial system caused by Republican (and Democrat) deregulation of mortgage-backed securities that cost $700 billion here, $700 billion there, and another trillion and a half dollars to half-correct when the Democrats finally came to power.

No. The Republicans do not like spending money on poor people, sick people, old people, disabled people, children, education, the environment, and especially anything that smacks ever-so-slightly of helping immigrants or people of color.

But Republicans love spending money on tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for giant corporations, and anything else they can think of to make the richest 1% of Americans richer at everyone else's expense.

And they are very good at drumming lies and half-truths into the minds of uniformed Americans with their propaganda arms: FOX News and right-wing hate-speech radio.

Re: "Taxes, and a Dangerous Purity" (7/31/2011)

Screwed.

2011-07-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Editor,

The House delay is being staged to run out the clock. The strategy is to pass their cockamamie plan with 30 seconds left to play so the Senate and the White House have no alternative but to rubber stamp it to avoid default.

Probably better to let Wall Street go down in flames than to accept the Republican's recipe for disaster. Either way the 98% they do not represent will be screwed, so might as well bring down Wall Street, too.

Re: "Lacking G.O.P. Support, House Won’t Vote on Debt Tonight" (7/29/2011)

Morons.

2011-07-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Why are Boehner and the House of Representatives wasting time passing a vacuous and idiotic bill that will be DOA in the Senate?

Acting out in an alternative, fantasy universe is not collaborating with their Senate partners to resolve this crisis, which by the way is entirely imaginary and deliberately manufactured by right-wing extremists, aka "Republicans," who kill their victims by defunding life-sustaining programs rather than shooting them like that moron in Norway kills his.

Re: "Boehner Seems Confident of Passing House Debt Vote" (7/29/2011)

Pat Buchanan

2011-07-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Pat Buchanan espouses precisely the racist "cultural Marxism" crap that the Norway shooter murdered dozens of people to eradicate; and "cultural Marxism" is code for nothing more than thinly veiled antisemitism peddled in the form of pseudo-intellectual right-wing "analysis" of the Frankfurt school, a group of Jewish economists who fled Germany in the 1930's and worked at the University of Chicago.

Pat Buchanan is also the idiot who introduced the highly toxic, specious slogan "culture war" into American discourse in a nationally televised speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Pat Buchanan's ideas are divisive poison and are prime examples of the pompous, racist, antisemitic, inflammatory garbage extreme right-wing "intellectuals" use to manipulate unsophisticated American voters to support candidates whose sole purpose to is loot, plunder, and pillage the American economy.

Pigs, idiots, and madmen.

2011-07-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Editor,

It doesn't take a lot of brains to figure out that human beings need clean air, clean water, and clean food to thrive on the planet Earth.

It might be a little more challenging for a religious fanatic to comprehend that in the web of life, in which human beings are inextricably woven, a life-sustaining balance among a multitude of species is necessary in order for human beings to thrive.

And of course people who are crazed with the lust for monetary riches have the hardest time of all understanding that in order for one's life to go on, there must be life.

So here we are. Pigs, idiots, and madmen rule our world, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any of them to engage in sensible dialog about the most fundamental challenges facing our species as a whole.

And it isn't like one or two despots are running the show. A culture of idiocy and greed pervades every aspect of our lives. One can only hope that an environmental catastrophe we survive, as opposed to one that wipes us all out, manages to wake up the true believers who are wallowing in lies before it is too late.

No, I am not advocating shooting people. Shooting people will not solve this problem.

Re: "Republicans Seek Big Cuts in Environmental Rules" (7/28/2011)

Radical right-wing rhetoric.

2011-07-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Radical right-wing rhetoric is ubiquitous in the United States, from FOX News to hate radio to Christian nationalist churches to state houses across the nation to the Pentagon and the U.S. Congress.

So yes, news about militant right-wing politics in Europe is illuminating, but more to the point in terms of the stability of our own society right here in the United States is reporting on just how mainstream the most outrageous lies, fantasies, and distortions by radical fringe racist and reactionary Christian groups become daily here at home.

Also, right-wing apologists like Bill O'Reilly say the Norway shooter shouldn't be characterized as a Christian because Jesus Christ taught peace and love not murder to his disciples. But this is disingenuous in the extreme, because Christendom can be and is taken as a set of racial, cultural, and social constructs by the radical right and others, not the set of Jesus Christ's teachings as recorded in the New Testament.

In fact, this is precisely the problem with New Dominion-style Christian nationalism -- this and the fact that it is in actuality promulgated in coded form (rants against "cultural Marxism," for example) by Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and a plethora of mainstream figures on FOX TV and a wide variety of radical right-wing media.

Re: "Norway Killings Shift Debate on Islam in Europe" (7/28/2011)

"Cultural Marxism"

2011-07-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Right-wing extremist’s agitation about what they call “Cultural Marxism” is frightening not only because their paranoia about it can and has resulted in horrific violence, but also because this enmity towards “Cultural Marxism” is mainstream in right-wing political discourse in the United States and Europe.

“Cultural Marxism” can be described as “political correctness on steroids” as Bill Berkowitz does in this 2003 article he wrote elucidating the history of this idea: "Reframing the Enemy".

Other, more disturbing links, connect the social, racial, and political fears that motivate the Norway shooter and those that define mainstream right-wing American political figures, including Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, Gabriella Geller, Andrew Breitbart, a host of Tea Party figures and fundamentalist right-wing Christian leaders like Pat Robertson, and others.

This interview with Devin Burghart, Vice President of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, explores these links: DevinBurghart20110726.html.

Re: "Lawyer Suggests Suspect in Norway Attacks Is Insane" (7/27/2011)

Right-wing Putsch.

2011-07-26T14:03:00.001-07:00

Editor,

Congressman Boehner stated in his "Rebuttal from La La Land" that President Obama "created" this crisis. This is a lie.

The credit ceiling has been raised routinely as a pro forma matter dozens of times by Republican and Democratic governments, but this year's crazed Republican cult has decided to use the debt ceiling approval process as a pretext to stage a right-wing Putsch.

Re: "Boehner Plan Faces G.O.P. Resistance and Veto Threat" (7/27/2011)

Why is this?

2011-07-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Anathema to Republicans is even the thought of "state-run" media because such a big and powerful conduit into the minds of millions could fill the populace with disinformation and convince readers/viewers to believe politically dangerous nonsense.

But a big, powerful corporation like News Corp that controls print, cable, movies, and even radio and broadcast TV, and therefore possesses exactly those capabilities itself, is not, in the wacky world of Republican "logic," a threat.

Why is this?

Re: "Pressure on James Murdoch Is About to Intensify" (7/25/2011)

Grandiosity.

2011-07-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Editor,

This shooter's belief that his rampage will spark a revolution sounds familiar. If I am not mistaken, Timothy McVeigh harbored similar fantasies, as did Donald Rumsfeld when he invaded Iraq -- that emboldened individuals of like mind would "rise up" and "overthrow" their oppressor(s).

There is of course no way to talk sense to a fanatic before the fact and explain that, no, there will be no revolution; but this is one aspect of the extremist mentality, apart from the sheer horror of the violence of which they are capable, that I find particularly disturbing -- the messianic component of their thinking, their grandiosity.

Re: "Norway Attacker May Have Had Accomplices; Death Toll Lowered" (7/26/2011)

Smoke.

2011-07-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

Editor,

The notion that "raising taxes would reduce incentives to work and create wealth" makes no sense to me.

The fact is that if you pay a lot of taxes, it (should) mean that you make a lot of money. And someone motivated to make a lot of money will make as much as they can regardless how much tax they pay. What. Someone who likes driving Lamborghinis is only going to make enough to drive a Nissan Sentra? It's ridiculous. S/he will work harder to make more so that lust for wealth and power can be satisfied.

Republican arguments that taxing "job creators" will hurt the economy are smoke, just one more sophistic distortion to try to scam as much money as possible into their benefactors' pockets without their having to do anything to get it.

Re: "Messing With Medicare" (7/25/2011)

The daylights.

2011-07-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Editor,

I worry about a mass movement being cultivated in the United States by right-wing politicians, FOX TV, and other elements -- including fundamentalist Christian organizations reported on by Chris Hedges in his book "American Fascists" -- that draws balloting strength from and otherwise legitimates an alarmingly large number of Americans who share this shooter's staunch espousal of cultural purity -- "real Americans" and all that.

Right-wing extremism in the U.S. combines gun love, corporate rule, xenophobia, sexual repression, and hatred for a laundry list of gays, Muslims, immigrants, socialists, and just the sort of people and ideas that drove this shooter to start killing people.

What worries me about the stage this business has reached in the U.S. is the political power the right has accumulated at every level of government here and the openness with which fascist rhetoric is dished out to eager listeners on TV and radio across the country, not to mention print and the Internet.

There is a tipping point. A lone gunman, or even a small militia group, can destroy the lives of a significant number of individuals, but a government that is finally dominated by a faction that represents one segment of society and feels threatened by all others can do enormous damage -- kill millions -- and destroy the nation. Just because the times this has happened are in the past and the places elsewhere does not mean it cannot happen again, here, and this scares the daylights out of me.

Re: "Police Say Oslo Suspect Admits ‘Facts’ in Massacre" (7/25/2011)

Forget it.

2011-07-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

Editor,

Yeah, but Grover Norquist's lemmings reject taxes out of hand, and they equate government "meddling" in the so-called free market with Stalinism. No, Republicans prefer to subsidize junk food manufacturers, and they do not characterize these subsidies as "socialism" because the subsidies are used to generate big profits for private enterprises. This logic makes sense to Republicans. Good luck getting them behind a "social engineering" plan that is good for people's health. Republicans prefer social engineering plans that are good for giant corporations' profits. But they don't call these plans social engineering. They call them the "free market," so forget it.

Re: "Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables" (7/24/2011)